Doodles and Daydreams

Jeff grew up in a small apple pie town surrounded by enchanted Adirondack forests and lakes created by a giant's fingers, so the story goes. The same backyard universe where writers Mark Twain, L. Frank Baum, Robert Louis Stevenson and Rod Serling's imagination once wandered, or artists such as Winslow Homer and Rockwell Kent drew from, surely contained the likes of aliens, Big Foot, Santa Claus or some other yet to be discovered character. If Jeff wasn't hanging out at Gary's comic shop, or in front of the tube watching reruns of the Brady Bunch, Lost in Space or any number of weird tales on EIVOM (that’s movie spelled backwards if you’re not from Syracuse), you'd probably find him at Schines Auburn Theater waiting for the latest Lucas, Spielberg or Disney film to flicker across the big screen. There was never any doubt as to what Jeff wanted to be when he grew up. All of this was the inspiration for the characters and stories that he would later create.

After working as an editorial Illustrator, Jeff pursued his childhood love of animation, characters and story telling by attending California Institute of the Arts program in character animation. He joined the Walt Disney Studio in Burbank as an assistant animator on the feature films Hercules, Mulan and Tarzan. He later became a supervising character artist for the Winnie the Pooh characters at Disney Consumer Products, then a humorous illustrator for entertainment and social expression at American Greetings.

Jeff is currently a freelance illustrator and creative entrepreneur who creates his own characters, stories and intellectual properties for kids from one to ninety-two. He is the creator of the animated sci-fi comedy concepts “Packages from Planet X," which aired on Disney XD in 2013, and "Boy, Girl, Dog, Cat, Mouse, Cheese," an animated TV show concept previously in development with Cartoon Network and Disney XD, set to air on the CBBC and Gulli networks. He is working on his first children's book along with continuing to develop animated TV show concepts. In addition, he is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Illustration Department at Cleveland Institute of Art.